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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Katie Duke, and I've been a nurse for over 20 years. Listen, I used to think that I was my most stylish in my 20s, but honestly, style and confidence only get better with age. And that is why I love figs. These scrubs are beautiful, comfortable, and they are built to last. They're not those boxy, scratchy uniforms that we all started out in. No, no, no. These fit perfectly. They feel amazing, and the quality is just. Wow. My favorite color, burgundy. It's chic, it's timeless, and it's even the same color as my apartment because I'm kind of obsessed with it. And I love adding custom embroidery to make my scrubs as personal as my style. And since I work in telehealth, my embroidered figs even double as my ID badge. It's never too late to reinvent yourself or your scrubs. Get 15% off your first order at wearfigs.com with the code FIGSRX. That's wherefigs.com, code FIGSRX for 15% off your first order.
- [01:04]
B
Hello and welcome to Mother Kind. If you want to feel happier and more confident in motherhood, then you are in the right place. I am your host, Zoe Blasky. I started this podcast six years ago with one mission to help you, and that is still my mission today. So when I asked you on Instagram, Oe Blasky, if you don't already follow me, what challenges you were facing right now. So many of you told me that screen time was where you were feeling really guilty. You were really feeling really confused about age appropriate games and you were just worried about safety and the amount of screen time that your little ones were getting. So as we come into the Christmas holidays, I feel like screen time in my house is only going to increase and I want us all to feel less guilty and more empowered. So I have found for us this week an incredible screen expert called Ash Brandin. Known as the Gamer Educator. They help guide families to have a relationship with screens and video games that benefits everyone. This episode has massively changed how I have handled screen time in my house this week. So I know it is going to help you too. You are going to learn the truth about screen time and dysregulation, why ending screen time often ends in tears, and what to do about it so that it happens less and less. You're going to learn the surprising way to keep your children safe on YouTube. Yes, it can be safe. And how to help children be responsible for their own screen time. You're going to love this episode. Just one more very quick thing. Tonight, the 30th of November Thursday, the 30th of November 2023, we are running an absolutely free workshop for you, our Mother Kind community, on how to handle the mental load at Christmas. If you feel like your head is about to explode with the juggle of life and Christmas as the cherry on top, then come along. It's at 8pm Come in your PJs. I promise you it's going to be a gorgeous hour. I'm going to be there teaching and sharing and connecting with you all. You're going to get to meet lots of other people in the Mother Kind community, which I know is something I get asked about a lot. It is completely free if you go to the Show Notes in this episode. So wherever you're listening to this, click on the episode. A load of text will come up and you'll see a link. Click that link and it will be there for you to book your space. You can also just go to the website motherkind.com, and it's there right on the homepage. Right, I'll let us get on with the episode. Here it is. This episode is sponsored by Karu Kids After School. Childcare can be so tricky, can't it? It's hard to find and usually means long days for little ones at school. Well, Korokids is changing that with flexible part time nannies that can work just the hours you need. Their nannies are from a variety of backgrounds, students, artists and writers, but they all have one thing in common which is a passion for working with children. Koru kids take care of the vetting references and employment checks. In fact, less than 5% of applicants actually go on to join the platform. And these nannies aren't fuddy duddy Mary Poppin types. They are the perfect solution to your busy family life. They let tired kids come home, eat a home cooked meal, get homework done and enjoy activities and fun, bringing joy to their afternoons and calm to your evenings. We all need a bit of that, don't we? For a limited time our listeners can trial a nanny for free. Yes, free, worth over £50. Just head to kids.co.uk that's K-O-R u kids.co.uk, and use the code Man Mother Kind when you sign up to get your free three hour trial. Ash what's fascinating about this conversation today is that I always ask our community for questions for the guests that we're going to be speaking to and for you, I was inundated more than probably any of the other guests put together. And that tells me that screen time is such a tricky topic for parents. And I know, you know, as a mum of two, I worry about it, I feel guilty about it, I stress about it. Why is that? Why was I inundated with these questions?
- [05:26]
C
I think it's an aspect of caregiving and parenting that for many complex reasons, we just feel that incredible emotional responsibility for. You know, we feel that already with, you know, with all aspects of parenting. But there's something about screen time. My opinion is that it's because we are often using screens in a way that it's not just about our kids, it's also about us. And I think that feels uncomfortable for people to acknowledge on my Instagram, the gamer educator. This has become a thing that I end up addressing a lot. Is reframing the idea of screen times per purpose anymore. Particularly in the last few years, particularly since COVID began, we have seen that ultimately we don't have the supports we really need as caregivers, particularly default caregivers, who tend to be women or people raised and socialized as women. And in the last few years, suddenly we're being told not only do you have to handle all of the mental health work and management of a household and all of the domestic labor, but now you also have to educate your kid at home and work, and you have to somehow be doing all of that with no additional systemic help. And particularly for people who might be single caregivers or they have families on shift work, or they have someone in the family with a disability or chronic illness and all of these layers of things, there's not enough support for that. And so what ends up happening is we end up filling it with something. And we are lucky that we are in an era where screens can fill in for some of those systemic gaps. I'm never saying it's good we have systemic gaps. It's not, but we have something that can fill in for them and often ends up becoming a screen. But I think that's hard for us because then it feels like we're using the screen for our own benefit. But the reality is, if I'm using a screen that allows me to then better meet the needs of my child, who is that actually benefiting? It's benefiting my child. So I think it actually is very child centric the way that we use screens. But I think when it benefits us in any way as the adults, we feel such guilt over that that I think we assume that we must be doing something wrong.
- [08:00]
B
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think because the prevailing narrative has been that screens are bad for children, they're bad for behavior, and they're bad for sleep. You know, for anything. Like me, I sort of wince as I hand over the screen. I don't know the research. That's what I'm hoping you're going to tell us today. I'm sort of really worried that I might be permanently messing up your brains. But here you go anyway, because I have to cook the dinner, and it's actually not safe for me to do that when you're at my feet.
- [08:27]
C
It becomes this compounding vicious cycle. The irony is that often many caregivers feel exactly as you just described. They want to withhold as much as they can because they've heard that's what's best, or they want to minimize the use of screens. Often their reason for wanting to minimize the use of screens is because they don't want their child to become obsessed with them. That's like a common word. I don't want my kid addicted. I don't want my kid obsessed with it. But what's funny is that when we treat screens that way, what we're doing is we're treating them as very special. Right? If I am withholding the screen and saying I need to use it as little as I possibly can, okay, fine, you can have it for five minutes. Well, what message does that send to the child that sends the message of this thing must be really, really special, because I'm only getting it in these really, really specific circumstances. And that can create what's called a scarcity mindset, which is, I don't know when I'm going to get this thing, so I better absorb everything I can from it, and I better ask for more because I don't know when to expect it again. And that unpredictability makes me want it even more. So then a child who's being given screens really scarcely and scarce doesn't necessarily mean minimally. I want to be clear, scarcely meaning unpredictably. That child may go, okay, well, I got screens for 10 minutes, but I don't know when I'm going to get it again. So maybe I should whine, okay, that didn't work. Maybe I should cry, okay, that did work. So next time I'll cry, make sure I get it again. And then the parrot hears that and goes, see, I knew it. I knew it. I gave them the screen, now they're crying. They wanted It, I should have restricted it even more. And then it just becomes this vicious cycle and we can disrupt that. It doesn't mean that our kids are always going to like that. It doesn't mean it's always going to be easy, but we can disrupt that. And one of the more simple ways, not always easy, but simple ways to do that, is to have screens be a more predictable part of our routine with kids. That doesn't mean they're available all the time. It doesn't mean they're available every day. It doesn't mean they're available when our kids want them to be. But we dictate when most things happen in our kids lives. You know, we dictate dinner, bedtime, bath time, homework. If I know like I have to get dinner on the table, as you said, well, maybe I decide, okay, this is the 30 minutes you're going to get. This is your screen time, this is my dinner time, I'm meeting my needs and my kids needs by making a meal and not getting overrun. My kids getting this time. And then they know what to expect, I know what to expect and it becomes more integrated into our lives.
- [11:11]
B
I wanted to loop back to that narrative of, you know, screens are bad. What does the research say about that? Because that's definitely been the predominant headline. There's no nuance there that's not broken down by age or type of screen or type of program, what's really going on.
- [11:27]
C
It is hard to have a lot of nuance in that conversation because screens are so ubiquitous and now can mean so many different things that to try to say screens are bad, that's kind of like saying food is bad. There's so many versions of those things that to make any kind of blanket statement like that, you kind of know up front, well, there's got to be some missing nuance in this conversation. Even talking about the research becomes tricky because there is a demonstrated publication bias in research that's done around screenshots. There is a meta analysis done by a particular researcher whose last name is Ferguson. And he found that research that was proposed to journals was more likely to be published if they purported to find a negative outcome from screens than if they found a neutral or a positive outcome from screens. And so it's sort of built into this foundation of even what we hear. And so sometimes people will say, but I see more negative than positive. And it's hard to even know why that is. Sometimes that's part of the bias. It's also very hard to prove that something doesn't do something. It's one thing to try to prove a screen causes something. It's hard to prove that a screen does not cause something because there's so many things that could be in play. There are many studies that claim many, many things, depending on if we're talking about tablets or TV or what kind of media, adult media, appropriate media, video games, have many studies that show their own thing. But generally speaking, for the studies that claim to show negative outcomes, there also tend to be studies that show positive or neutral outcomes. We just tend to hear more about one than the other. Most of the time when we're hearing negative results, those results tend almost entirely to be what we call correlational studies, meaning thing X is happening and thing Y is also happening. So these things are happening in parallel. They are almost never causal studies, which is to say thing X is causing thing Y. That's a lot harder to prove. It's a lot easier to say this thing is happening and this thing is also happening and then try to find a link between them. So that's also important to keep in mind. Many of these studies also are not longitudinal. They don't track kids over time. So they might say, oh well, we tested this group of 4 year olds and the group who had screens did work worse. When you read into those studies, often it's that they did worse on a test that happened immediately after. But maybe they didn't test them again after an hour or two hours and they weren't keeping track of them over six months or a year to see, okay, how is prolonged access to screens or no screens having any impact? Or is it so sometimes that nuance is missing in the studies because making a study is very hard, especially a study on kids. So what we hear is the sound bite is often just that. It's often a sound bite. I try not to even rely that much on talking about research too often because as I mentioned earlier, screens are here. They're not going away. We can't wish them away. Especially like in the U.S. i'm in the U.S. our education system is very, very screen reliant now. So even if I ban them at my house, I can't avoid them in all parts of my child's life. So if I'm solely focusing on these reports of research that might be preventing me from finding ways to manage technology with my child in a way that feels sustainable and that's probably going to set us up for more success in
- [15:12]
B
the long run, that resonates with me. You know, they're here to Stay. How do we manage it? Something that I see for sure is that when my girls finish their screen time, they seem more dysregulated. Is that a universal thing? What's going on there?
- [15:28]
C
All kids, all screens, and all brains are different, as I like to say. So I know for me, if I am playing a video game and I'm getting really close to the end and I'm really, really working really hard, and I'm investing a ton of my effort, and then I fail, I'm probably going to be mad. And if I stopped and then my spouse came up to me and said, why are you so angry? It's just a game that's just that. That wouldn't go very well, right? I would feel so invalidated. I'd be like, I just worked really hard at that. Of course I'm upset, right? Or for adults, I often say, like, imagine you finish watching a TV show that you're really invested in and they kill off your favorite character. Imagine you're reading a book and, like, you get to the end and you're just sad it's over, or you're happy or whatever. You're feeling any emotion related to the media. And imagine that someone turned to you and like, well, why are you so upset? It would feel really kind of invalidating of very real emotions. Games are not real. The emotions they evoke are very real. And TV might make a child react differently. A tablet might make a child react differently. Different kinds of shows, different kinds of games. It's going to be very different depending on the kid. I like encouraging families to pay attention to those things, just as you did, because it's data, it's information. Because then you can say, oh, yeah, okay, like, we're already having a really busy day. We're already, like, on the go, or we skipped nap. Like, the cards are already stacked against us. You know, maybe that's not the day to have them play the app that always ends in tears and a meltdown. But that's also really good information for our kids to know. Like, hey, you know, I noticed when we play this game, it seems to be really hard to stop. And we've had a really busy day. I'm thinking that today it might be better to play Calm App A or Calm App B, right? And just offer some different options. That way we're not. We're not being punitive. We're not saying this screen is making you angry, but it's also telling them, like, hey, different things affect you differently. That's okay. It's true for all of us. And we can pay attention to those things and make changes to set us up for success. That's a skill and we want that in lots of parts of our lives. This is just another area that that can present it.
- [17:50]
B
100. I want to get on to some listener questions because we had so many. So the first one is it's linked, actually really beautifully linked to what you were just talking to, which is ending screen time. I got a lot of questions about this that there's always an argument, there's always crying, there's a beg for more, there's often screaming. Why do we get into that power struggle when it comes to ending screen time?
- [18:15]
C
It's hard to say the why. Depending on the family, it could be, as I mentioned earlier, there's maybe this aspect of scarcity. It might be, you know, I don't know when I'm going to have it again. So I'm going to try everything I can to try to get more of it now. I often encourage families to have this predictable relationship with screen time. It's not an overnight solution. It takes time to get kids used to a routine. Especially if a child is maybe used to a more scarce relationship with where they didn't really know when they were going to have access to screens. It can take a long time, it can take weeks for them to really build in trust and buy in into something new. For me and for many people that follow me, they have found that having that predictable relationship, it makes it more predictable for the child but also for the adult. You know, sometimes we fall into the trap of like, oh, I really need that five extra minutes. Or I just, you know, I can't even right now. And then now I feel guilty. So now I feel like you have to take it away. Well, sometimes having that routine is nice for the adult because then I know, okay, like, I have five more minutes of the screen time I need to wrap up what I'm doing. I need to make sure I'm in a good stopping point too. I'm not just saying yes forever to get more time, but it also helps me have some like, boundaries to fall back on that. You know, I can always say, I know it's so hard to end these fun things. We're ending screen time today. I'm going to help turn the tablet off right now. Screen time will be available tomorrow again at 5 o', clock. Just like it is every day or whatever. Your routine is to just fall back on that kind of neutral enforcement of boundaries. Are they going to like that? No, they're probably not always going to like that. So depending on, you know, your child or what they're playing, it can also be really helpful to pay attention to the actual structure of what they're doing. So some games, particularly like apps, tablet apps, are very open ended and it's very hard to stop doing something open ended. You know, if I'm in the middle of a project and suddenly someone's like, we have a dinner reservation, we have to leave right now. You know, it's hard, it's hard to just get up in the middle of something. So if you notice that it can be helpful to just pay attention to what the structure is of what they're doing. They're playing a racing game, you know, we could say, okay, you have time for one more race. If they are doing something that is leveled, you know, okay, we're going to get to the end of this level and then stop. We can use the structure of what they do to help us end it. And if it is something really open ended, you know, obviously we can use time, we can set a timer, we have a visual timer, whatever. But it can be helpful to even like make a note of what they're doing. Particularly in games like Minecraft or I'm playing the new Zelda right now, it's pretty open ended. I will literally put myself somewhere so that I'll remember what I was doing. I'll put myself at the entrance to a building so that when I turn the game back on I'm like, oh, that's where I was, that's what I'm doing. So we could say, hey, we're going to write on a sticky note what you were working on. Put it on the switch so that tomorrow when you turn it on, you remember exactly what you're doing. Another phrase I love that I use all the time is how will you know when you're done? And it's a great off ramp phrase of like, hey, we have 10 minutes left. What's one more thing you want to get done today? How will you know you've reached your stopping point today? So that we're building in some of that executive functioning and time management planning too.
- [21:47]
B
That was one of the questions that we got from our community was with older kids, how do you help them manage their own screen time?
- [21:54]
C
I think it really depends on where is that responsibility level. I guess I would ask yourself, what do you still want to be in control of? I would not relinquish responsibility for something that ultimately you're still going to want the final say on. Because all that's really going to do is you're going to end up in a power struggle, even if you are trying to avoid one. Because if you're in the back of your mind going, oh, but I really want you to do your homework first, then as soon as they say I'm going to do screens and then my homework, you're going to bristle at that, right? So if that's non negotiable, fine. But have those in mind. You know, don't offer something that you're not okay with them changing from what you might want. So maybe you decide, okay, I've decided how much time they get to decide when that time is. You know, maybe I say, hey, you can have an hour of screens today. Do you want it all at once or do you want to break it up? Or they decide when it falls through their day, there will probably be times that they will make decisions that we will not like that might not be what we would want. And we can monitor that, right? They might choose, okay, I'm going to come home, get home from school and immediately turn the PlayStation on and not do my homework. And we can watch that from afar and see how that goes. Give them that chance for that responsibility. And if it's working for them, great. If we're worried, if we're noticing something, then we might choose to step in and have that conversation of like, how is this? Here's what I'm noticing. What are you noticing? Should we try something different so that again, we're building in some of that accountability and not just kind of throwing them to it and say, good luck. So you could do the same thing with content. You might say, okay, we're okay with games with this kind of rating level, or we're okay with one of these 20 games and then they decide which ones they play. You might do similar things for access to online content. You might say, you can play with someone online so long as we've met them, but then they're deciding what friends those are. So there's ways of sort of scaffolding the responsibility. If the ultimate goal is they're managing all these things themselves, I think it can be helpful to think backward and think, what are the skills they need to be able to get to that point.
- [24:07]
B
I got lots of questions about that for you, about safety. How do we keep our children safe online, on YouTube, on even things like, I mean, my girls aren't into games, but I think on Roblox even you can Speak to strangers. How on earth do we do that?
- [24:25]
C
Okay, depends on the thing. First of all, I will say if people are wanting to learn more about YouTube safety controls, YouTube actually has really in depth and robust controls. They are not intuitive. So on my website, thegamereducator.com I have three pretty long form blog posts, they're all completely free that walk through different ways that you can control YouTube. I think people assume it's YouTube and YouTube kids and that's it. And a lot of people have given YouTube kids a bad rep because a lot of stuff on there is not that appropriate for kids. But YouTube Kids is actually a really great way of giving kids access to YouTube if you pair it with the parental settings. So my child has access to YouTube Kids and the way we have it set up is they only see things that we have pre approved for them. They don't see anything that YouTube suggests. They can't click, they can't search, they can't. They see the set menu of things that we have approved. But for me then my child can browse those things and I'm not worried. I could leave the room and I'm not concerned because I already know it's on there. There are some in betweens. You can block Entire channels on YouTube, you can block videos, you can monitor an account. Like if you have a teenager and you want to maybe give them more responsibility but also know what they're watching, you can monitor their account through something called Google Family Link. So there's lots of ways to do it. None of it is like 30 second easy. It's maybe 10 to 15 minutes of some intentional setting it up, but then those structures are in place and they're there for you. So those are on my website, if that's helpful. Many games also have similarly robust parental controls. Roblox has some pretty good parental controls. A lot of it is doing those things early, if not before you give your child access, then pretty soon. Because as I'm sure many people have experienced a lot easier to do that preventatively and proactively than realize, oh my gosh, we have a problem. And now I have to walk everything back. When it comes to games that have an online component, which increasingly is many of them, you can choose many times to just not have the online component be part of what your child can even access. Minecraft has recently entered my family's life and my family. There's no online component to Minecraft and my child is still very excited to play it. They don't know that there's anything to do online with that game and for right now that's fine. They don't need to know more than that. So deciding again, what level of this am I comfortable with to start with? And generally taking the content offline is going to be the safest way to do that. If you can't take it offline, then looking at the controls that are in place and seeing if you can restrict it so that they can't be contacted by people turning chats off, turning audio chats off. You can sometimes restrict it so that they can only see or interact with people that you approve of. So then you're having to approve those people. It might just be family or in real life friends. So really look at what controls are there. The last thing I will say is Roblox. I did an interview once with a podcast where one of the hosts wasn't there. And then after the fact I heard the final interview and this secondary host said something like, oh yeah, my child doesn't play video games, they just play Roblox. And I thought that was so interesting because I thought what do you mean they don't play video games, they just play Roblox. Because I describe roblox as the YouTube of gaming. YouTube is largely unregulated video content. Roblox is largely unregulated game content. It can be cool. You can figure out how to make your own game. Like the tools are pretty much free. That's a really cool thing. Many kids would love to be able to make their own games. And the problem with that is that it's not regulated. There's very, very little regulation. And so even if a game is appropriate, that doesn't mean it's good, that doesn't mean it's well made. And obviously there's going to be content on there that is absolutely not appropriate. So you can restrict Roblox content to only show you things that are a certain age range. I think you can restrict it even further. That's another area where if you can devote some time to get ahead and maybe poke around in there a bit before you give access to a two year kid, it will probably pay off. That investment will really pay off
- [29:04]
B
thanks to this week's sponsor, Belkin. My girls love Belkin's soundform headphones for their screen or music time. They can be with or without a wire. They are incredible quality and really durable, which given how much they get dropped and thrown about, is very important. They're super soft and comfy for the girls to wear. They've Got a long lasting battery life and my seven year old tells me they're cool probably because they come with stickers that she decorated hers with. So there you go. What more do we need than that? And for us parents, the kids range is also specially engineered to protect their hearing with a maximum volume limit. I want you to try these amazing headphones for yourself. So visit belkin.comuk use the code motherkind15 for 15% off their entire audio range. I think these gorgeous headphones would make a brilliant Christmas present. So that's motherkind15 on bellkin.com UK offer is valid to the end of January 31st and is for the UK only. Is interesting because my nearly 8 year old, some of her friends at school have it and I don't think she knows what it is but she asked for it the other day and I said well listen, Mummy needs to research it and understand it and maybe play it myself. And then I said come and talk to me in a year and I'm just trying to kick the can down the road. She's not mentioned it since. But that's the fear, isn't it? There's such a fear based response from me like oh my gosh, no. So you know, I think that's quite common, isn't it? When our kids ask for games. My girls haven't ever had a game before so that feels like a really big thing for me because so far it's been like Daniel Tiger and Gabby's Dollhouse on the tv.
- [30:45]
C
You know, kids asking for things they hear about is not new, right? Like I certainly did that. I don't know what I did it with, but I know I did it with something. But you know, the stakes feel very high now because of the mechanism and the media that they're asking for. And I sometimes think it can helpful to even ask, well what is that? What are your friends playing on Roblox? What is it you want to do on that game? Why do you think it sounds like fun? What do you think you would do with it to even get some idea of what they're even envisioning? Or if you decide that certain things are not okay, like we're not going to be a Roblox household. I don't think that's a bad thing to decide. Everyone's going to decide what is or isn't off limits. It's not bad to say we're not going to allow this thing. And if I'm hearing my child's desire and hearing oh I heard I could do this sort of game or play this thing. Maybe we can find other ways to, you know, to scratch that itch and to find something that we could pivot to and say yes to. I think it can also be surprisingly helpful to be transparent with kids about why we're saying no to things or looking at something together. We've done that in my household around YouTube content, as I alluded to earlier. You know, we're pretty strict on what we allow, but then there are even some videos on the channels that we allow where generally we're okay with that person's content, but not all the time. Even just being very transparent with our child and saying, yeah, videos that have these things are going to be okay or not okay, whichever way is easier to talk about. And, you know, our kiddo picked up on it so, so, so quickly. And very quickly was like, oh, yeah, no, I can't watch that one. And knew right away, like, oh, yeah, that's not okay for us. It's not okay for our family. I like that you said originally, just knowing immediately your initial response of, here are the things I need to do before I can respond to you. That's something. I think it's really important, whether it's an amount of time or just certain things that have to be done. If my child asks for a game that we haven't familiarize ourselves with, I will generally say, like, I need to talk to your other parent. We have to look at this game together. Like you said, we're gonna explore it, we're gonna play it, we're gonna see if we're comfortable with it. I'll get back to you in some amount of time. Kids don't always like that. And there's a lot of me saying, our job is to keep you safe. We have to make sure that this is something we can say yes to. And we have a lot of instant gratification in our society, but we're allowed to take time to make our rules. It's okay. It can take time.
- [33:17]
B
And when parents are looking at those games and deciding, do I let my child on this? What are some red flags for games and what are some green flags for games? Because how on earth, like, say I go on Roblox and I'm fishing around it and I'm having, like, how am I gonna know? I have no idea.
- [33:37]
C
Okay. To be honest with you, Roblox is hard for me to speak to because I try to go on it as little as possible. But things as a whole. So if it's, like, specific games More like video games or freestanding apps or TV shows, movies. I really love Common Sense Media, which is a website that has content information about thousands and thousands of apps, games, videos, movies. What I really like is that they also include reviews from parents and kids. So I really like that because it will have content information that's very specific. It's not just, oh, this game is E for everyone. It might be this game has depictions of bullying, or this game uses positive peer relationships or has more insight, or it might say, oh, this game has, you know, cartoon gun violence using Nerf guns. Right. Which is going to be very different than realistic violence. Whether or not that's okay with a family is going to be different. But I like Common Sense Media. They're a really great resource. I like also being able to see what kids and parents are saying. Sometimes they are speaking to certain things differently. So my red flags in games are very different, I think, than what people assume. I think people assume I have to look out for guns. I have to look out for insidious violence. I'm not saying not to look out for those things, but to me, the thing that turns me off very quickly from a game is if it's free. And I know that's probably not what people are expecting to hear more and more. Many apps are increasingly free, what we call free to play, meaning that they're free to download, they're free to begin playing, but they're not necessarily free forever. The problem with that is that how the game functions psychologically ends up being very different. So if I pay for a game or an app and I download it or I buy it in the store, they have my money. They can't get more money from me in most cases. So they have to make me happy that I spent my, whatever, $20 on this game. So most of the time, that means the game's going to be intrinsically motivating, it's going to be fun, it's going to challenge me, it's going to make me feel in control. Those are not bad things to feel. Those are things we feel when we climb a mountain, when we bake a cake, when we draw a picture. But when a game is free, they don't want you to feel happy, because if you're happy playing the game without spending any money, then that's a really terrible business model.
- [36:20]
B
Right?
- [36:20]
C
They won't make any money. That's not what they want. So free to play games tend to incentivize spending money. So instead of, oh, my gosh, get to the End of this level. You did it. You're so amazing. It's, hey, you'd have so much more fun if you bought this item. This weapon is going to be the best thing. This outfit's going to make you go faster. If you subscribe, then you get more coins every day. And the problem with that is that it's actually diverting our attention from intrinsic motivation and it's turning it into extrinsic motivation. It's turning it into I should spend money to have fun. And that's not a particularly healthy thing for kids. And it's also not sustainable. So that's what I often look out for, is I try to avoid games that have a pay to play or a free to play component. The most famous example of that is Fortnite. Fortnite's free to play game. I'm not saying you cannot say yes to those in my house. If I say yes to those, I'm saying yes to this. But here are the parameters we're not spending any money on. It might be a parameter. You're only spending your allowance money. Depending on the age of the kid, it can be a good way to talk about budget conversations or how we spend our money. But it is definitely something to be aware of for green flags, particularly if you're looking for something that is more like educational. Often families, particularly if you have young kids, are like, oh, I want them to play a game that's going to help them learn something. Often games or apps that are quote unquote educational are often not doing what we might think they're doing. So games that give a ton of feedback, particularly educational games that are giving a ton of feedback, they're like, yeah, you did it. Try again one more time. This kind of constant din of sound that is not actually teaching our kids things necessarily, it's really just reinforcing. And if we're wanting kids to maybe play games that have educational or academic opportunities or aspects to them, those tend to be more open ended, child led experiences. If you think about a kid who's playing independently, we might see them stacking blocks or building with magnet tiles, or digging in the sandbox, or building with Lego. And we can look at that and we can recognize there's learning going on both concretely and kind of abstractly. But when they're doing that in a digital space, it's harder to see. But that doesn't mean it's not happening. So if you're looking at an educational app and it's very like rigid, you know, like oh, match this shape to its color. Hooray. You know, that probably will be more rote memorization and brute force on the side of the child. And if you're okay with that, it's going to reinforce that they do or don't know. Great, fine. But if you're looking for something that might promote more critical thinking, that's actually probably going to happen from games that are meant to be fun. Because if I'm having fun, I'm going to work really hard. You know, if I'm playing a game and I'm dying and I'm struggling, but I really want to get to the end, I'm going to figure out how to do it. And that is going to actually result in learning. Might not be the learning that my parent thinks that I was going to have, but doesn't mean that it's not there.
- [39:40]
B
Makes a lot of sense. And I want to ask you about one more area before we close, and that is quite a big one, which is social media. So I've got a lot of questions for you about my 11 year old is asking for a smartphone. My 12 year old wants Instagram. My 13 year old wants to go on TikTok. I'm going to be honest with you, I am dreading this conversation because I'm on Instagram for my work and I see what it's like and for me and our family, there's no way I'd want my 13 year old near that. But I know that most of her peers probably will be and that's a tricky spot. What's your view?
- [40:21]
C
The longer I'm on the Internet, the longer I'm like with you, the longer I exist on the Internet, the more I'm like, get me off of this. And like, I occupy a pretty lovely corner of the Internet. I'm not like a very controversial creator. I'm not a political, like I'm not doing anything in a particularly contentious space. But I have a reel coming out about this on Friday, actually about the way we model our own technology use and the impact that has on our kids because I think that's huge. I also think it's an area where we probably have a lot of guilt and I didn't want to tread there too much because for a long time we were all home and working in school and everything was on phones and devices and there's only so much you can do about that. But I've had to become really intentional with the way I relate to social media and I'm grateful that I'm there now. I should have been there earlier in my life. And I agree. I don't talk very much about social media because to be honest, that should be someone's entire account and all they do. There's so much there. And I frankly don't have very much social media presence. I say, ironically, someone who has public social media, but I don't exist on TikTok, I don't exist on Facebook. I barely exist anywhere besides Instagram. I think that as caregivers, our primary concern tends to be the safety of our children. And I've used this analogy before. We hear sometimes people say, like, I don't want to be my child's friend. I want to be their parent. But sometimes they also say, like, oh, I don't want my kid to be mad at me, right? I don't want my kid to be bad. I don't want my kid to dislike me. I don't want my kid to resent this. And I completely get that. And the way that kind of helped me reframe this was I started thinking about not trying to be my child's friend, but trying to be their best friend. Because when I think about a best friend, a best friend is somebody who will call you out on your stuff, you know, and. And they will say, hey, I love you. I love you so much. I'm going to tell you what you're doing is not okay, right? Or this isn't safe, or this worries me. And they're going to enforce those boundaries and they're going to be with you through the hard things because they love you that much. And for me, that's probably where I land. If I were getting to a place where social media was something that I was going to expose my child to, obviously I'm not there yet. My child's way too young for social media, and it's not relevant. If I were at that point, I would probably be tiptoeing in by starting with a family account, like, okay, we can have a family Instagram account and we all have access to this account and we are friends with your friends, but everyone's seeing these things and we all have access to it in a really overtly monitored way, so that it also can be something that's not completely done in isolation. I think one of the more difficult things about social media is it's extremely isolating. You're connected with every single human in the world, but you are all alone in the receiving end of it. So I think being able to start the conversation from a place of not fear. But hey, we all have access to this. Let's talk about what we saw. Like, oh look, our cousin shared this picture. Oh, look at this video that our friend shared. And then we can talk about those things because we're all seeing them. It can blend itself into some conversations about what do you think about that? Or if things come up that feel unsafe, that can be more organic. And instead of putting us in the position of feeling like we have to micromanage or be like spying on them, but starting from a place of we're all in this together before we give them more private access.
- [44:07]
B
I think it's true. And interestingly, I've been hearing a lot of teenagers recently willingly saying, I can't manage this, I don't want to be on this. Like a friend's son said that recently, I think he's 16, said, I don't want to be on this anymore. I can't handle it. I can't stop on TikTok. So I think, yeah, I mean TikTok petrifies me in particular because it's just, there's no stopping you. You're just going and going and going and going. That's why I'm not on it because I know that I would be probably waste hours of my day on that. It's a minefield, isn't it? And I think what you say is true. I think maybe it's having a conversation with that absolute specialist who spends all day, every day thinking about kids and social media because it's such a tricky thing. When I think about this, I have to extend a lot of compassion to myself and all other parents because we're the first generation grappling with this. We have no blueprint. It feels like a big scary experiment to me. No one knows the long term impact really well. We can't because we're only, you know, we're only as far as we are and our parents didn't have to grapple with this. So I don't know what it feels like to be a 10 year old, you know, who wants to go on social media because that wasn't my reality growing up. So yeah, I feel like it's a lot of compassion to us, the parents as well, for having to handle this extra layer, huge extra layer of responsibility that is very, very new.
- [45:36]
C
What's interesting is that you're right in that we're the first kind of generation of people navigating this as parents, but we are also many of us, an early generation of users of the Internet. So like you said of, like, our parents not navigating this. Well, the reality is our parents actually were, but they weren't realizing it. And so I think because many of us grew up in that early Internet, speaking only for me, I can look back and go, oh, my God. Like, I should not have been allowed to do a lot of what I was doing because it was the Wild west of the Internet days. I was a kid on the Internet in the late 90s, early 2000s. That's when I was like a teenager on the Internet. And I look back and I'm like, I am so lucky. Things could have gone really badly. I am so lucky. But I don't think you realize the weight of that as a parent if you weren't in it, seeing some of those things. So I think a lot of our parents, and it was out of. They had no idea. Otherwise they probably would have been freaking out. And then we grow up to be parents going, oh, I. I know. I remember that. And now it's these other layers of complexity and inescapability and not wanting to repeat that with our kids. I think that is a reasonable thing to feel. And I think we're very unique, like you said, in that way, in that we're kind of on both ends of it. We grew up with it. We know how hard that is, and now we feel that pressure to do better. Not to say our parents are doing badly. They didn't know, but now we feel like we know we should do something
- [47:15]
B
with it for sure. I always ask the same final question, which is, if you could give just one gift to all the mothers in the world, what would that one gift be and why?
- [47:24]
C
Well, I'm not a mother, so to caregivers of the world, what I often say to caregivers who are so worried about some aspect of their caregiving or their child, I say, the fact that you're this involved and this concerned already says so much about you as a caregiver. Being this involved and caring this much is so much more important than the minutiae of decisions that we make. Loving our kids, centering them in their safety, caring deeply matters so much more than the individual decisions that we end up making.
- [48:12]
B
It's true. It's beautiful. Such beautiful message. Thank you so much you've given me and I know our audience so much to think about, and I just really, really appreciate it because it does feel like a very tricky area. Where can someone come and find you and your work?
- [48:33]
C
Easiest to find me on Instagram at thegamer. Educator. I mentioned YouTube guides. Those are on my website. My website doesn't have very much on it, but I have some blog posts for things like Nintendo Switch and Amazon Fire Tablets and some other resources there. But my YouTube guides are also on there. That's thegamereducator dot. And yeah, that's where you find me.
- [48:55]
B
Amazing. Thank you so much. So that was the episode. I hope that you really enjoyed it, as ever. If you did, please consider sharing it with your friends and leaving me a review on itunes. It really does make a difference to the number of mums that we can reach. With the brilliant wisdom of the guests I have on.